In the northern Indian state of Haryana, courtship is generally intricate business, but the mothers of the brides-to-be have simplified matters by clearing stating to potential grooms: “If you don’t have a toilet, you cannot marry my daughter.”

The slogan, which is a bit longer in Hindi and specifically reads: “If you don’t have a proper lavatory in your house, don’t even think about marrying my daughter,” has been plastered all across villages as part of a campaign to increase the number of available facilities.

The chronic shortage of proper plumbing is ironic in a region of the country where more households have TV sets than toilets.

Believe it or not, it is estimated that in India more than 660 million people still defecate in the open, causing a myriad of medical conditions ranging from diarrhea to polio.

With 8% more men than women, the fairer sex in India have become more vocal about expressing their resentment at having to relieve themselves outside, giving brides more leverage in pre-marital bargaining.

“Women suffer the most from this situation. They must go outside and they have to do so before sunrise or after nightfall so they can’t be seen,” said Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh, a company that has built toilets for ten million Indians, and the recipient of this year’s Stockholm Water Prize for developing eco-friendly lavatories to improve public health.

The campaign has yielded very positive results. About 1.4 million lavatories have been built in the state since 2005, many of them with significant government subsidies. “We have more toilets, less shame among women and less disease,” said S.K.Monda, the official in charge of the program.

There are still those who fight progress, as some upper-caste communities are not happy having lavatories in their homes because it is believed such an arrangement is unclean.

(weirdasianews.com)

A Finnish millionaire Jari Bär, the former owner of the Iisalmi’s company Finnritilä was handed a fine of 111,888 euros (141,661 dollars) for doing 82 km/h (51 mph) in a 60 km/h (37 mph) zone on January in Siilijärvi, Finland.

According to Savon Sanomat if the speed had been 80 km/h the fine would have been only 115 Euros.

Looks like these extra 2 km were critical and cost him more than a brand new Porsche 911 GT3. In his case 20 km more would have been a standard fine, but these 2 extra kilometers made the difference.

Why such a huge speeding ticket? In Finland fines are issued according to ones salary per day. As Mr. Bär was 2 km over the standard fine range he had to pay his 12 days income. If his income in 2007 had been 50 euros a day, then the ticket would have been 600 euros.

It turns out that in 2007 he sold a majority stake in his company and in average made an impressive 9300 euros a day, which translates to a 111,888 euros speeding ticket. Of course Mr. Bär is not happy as his real income today is not that big.

In Finland tax records are public and there is no such thing as maximum fines. The more you make the more you pay!

Source: savonsanomat

For centuries, restaurants have been making the same fiscal error time and time again: serving delicious food at reasonable prices. Truly a recipe for fiduciary disaster. Here at least are ten restaurants that understand, to truly make a profit in the food business, you want to guarantee your patrons eat as little as possible, then get the hell out. It’s called “high turnover.” Ask an economist.

Modern Toilet Restaurant - TAIWAN

Have you ever heard of people eating out of a bathroom toilet and having great fun? A restaurant named Marton Theme Restaurant, in Kaohsiung (Taiwan) has a toilet theme and is a great hit among people. The restaurant has a bathroom decor, with colorful toilet seat being the standard chairs at the restaurant. It also serves food in plates and bowls shaped like western loo seats and Japanese “squat” toilets. Customers sits by a tables converted from a bathtub with a glass cover while looking at a wall decorated with neon-lit faucets and urinals turned into lamps. The restaurant is named after the Chinese word “Matong” for toilet and is doing really well. The owner Eric Wang says “We not only sell food but also laughter. The food is just as good as any restaurant but we offer additional fun. Most customers think the more disgusting and exaggerated (the restaurant is), the funnier the dining experience is.” The meals are cheaply priced with a meal set including soup and ice cream costs from 150 to 250 Taiwan dollars ($6 - $10).

For Cannibals - JAPAN

“Nyotaimori” (which literally means “female body plate”) is the name of the japanese restaurant that serves sushi and sashimi on a naked woman’s body. The body is made from food and placed on an operating table, much as though in a hospital. You can “operate” anyway and anywhere you want by cutting open the body and eating what you find inside. The body will actually bleed as you cut it and the intestines and organs inside are completely editable. It’s a banquet of Cannibalism.

In the Sky - BELGIUM

“Dinner in the Sky” is a Brussels based restaurant that serves dinner for up to 22 people… 150 feet in the air! The specially-designed table and chairs are lifted by a crane. Dinner anywhere in Belgium will set you back almost 8 thousand euros; other locations are also available. Remember, you must wear your seat belt, and don’t drop your fork!

Complete darkness - CHINA

The first dark restaurant in Asia is officially opened on the 23 December 2006. This restaurant, located in Beijing, China, has its interior painted completely black. Customers are greeted by a brightly lit entrance hall and will be escorted by waiters wearing night vision goggles into the pitch dark dining room to help them find their seats. Flashlights, mobile phones and even luminous watches are prohibited while in this area.

The meal will be taken in this environment with the complete loss of vision. By starving one’s sense, your other senses are stimulated to full alert “all so the theory goes” and your food will taste like it’s never tasted before. In case you are wondering about the washrooms, they are all brightly lit.

Graveyard Restaurant - INDIA

The bustling “New Lucky Restaurant” in Ahmadabad is famous for its milky tea, its buttery rolls, and the graves between the tables. Krishan Kutti Nair has helped run the restaurant built over a centuries-old Muslim cemetery for close to four decades, but he doesn’t know who is buried in the cafe floor. Customers seem to like the graves, which resemble small cement coffins, and that’s enough for him.

“The graveyard is good luck,” Nair said one recent afternoon after the lunch rush. “Our business is better because of the graveyard.” The graves are painted green, stand about shin high, and every day the manager decorates each of them with a single dried flower. They’re scattered randomly across the restaurant - one up front next to the cash register, three in the middle next to a table for two, four along the wall near the kitchen.

Prison - ITALY

A restaurant situated inside the top security prison Fortezza Medicea in Italy is so popular that officials have since opened more branches. Serenaded by Bruno, a pianist doing life for murder, the clientele eat inside a deconsecrated chapel set behind the 60ft high walls, watch towers, searchlights and security cameras of the daunting 500-year-old Fortezza Medicea, at Volterra near Pisa. Under the watchful eye of armed prison warders, a 20-strong team of chefs, kitchen hands and waiters prepares 120 covers for diners who have all undergone strict security checks. Tables are booked up weeks in advance.

Undersea Restaurant - MALDIVES

The first-ever undersea restaurant in the world has been introduced at the Hilton Maldives Resort & Spa in April 2007. Ithaa (which is pronounced “eet-ha” and means “pearl” in the language of the Maldives, Dhivehi) sits five meters below the waves of the Indian Ocean, surrounded by a vibrant coral reef and encased in clear acrylic, offering diners 270 degrees of panoramic underwater views. This innovative restaurant is the first of its kind in the world, and is part of a US $5 million re-build of Rangalifinolhu Island, one of the twin islands that make up Hilton Maldives Resort & Spa. This re-build includes the construction of 79 of the most luxurious beach villas in the country as well as the Spa Village, a self-contained, over-water “resort-within-a-resort” consisting of a spa, restaurant and 21 villas.

Condoms- THAILAND

“Cabbages and Condoms” is a chain of restaurants in Thailand. There are condoms on the walls and pictures of condoms printed on the carpets. Instead of after-dinner mints, patrons are offered a bowl of condoms at the counter. Profits from the restaurants go to support the Population and Community Development Association (PDA).

Medical Restaurant - TAIPEI

D.S. Music Restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan is a medical-themed restaurant with crutches on the wall, waitresses dressed a nurses, and drinks served from an IV drip bottle! The owner came up with the idea to express his gratitude for care he received at a local hospital.

Buns and Guns - LEBANON

For the love of God, GET DOWN! Ba-CHKOW! JESUS CHRIST! It’s…a turkey sub on French bread. But what’s that on the side?! GRENADES!!!!! Wa-BOOOOOOOMers! Grenades means potato wedges.

It’s that kind of playful double entendre that makes Buns and Guns the premiere Hezbollah-themed fast food chain in Lebanon. After a lengthy battle with competing chains Burgers and Lugers, Khomeini’s House of Schwarma and Fuck Israel!, Buns and Guns became known nationwide as the “home of the AK-47 Kalashnikov” which you may be perplexed to learn is a beef sandwich.

And at Buns and Guns, it’s not just the item names that get your adrenaline pumping. They’ve gone all out to provide a dining experience as akin as possible to fighting for your life on a bomb-scarred battlefield in the DMZ. Special touches include chefs sporting battle helmets, sandbags out front, and menu items like the “Claymore” pizza, topped with peppers, onions, mushrooms, olives, corn and tomato. Pull one of the gooey slices away and watch as vegetarian entrails slop off onto your camo tablecloth! KaBLOOEY! Just don’t step on it!

And to make your dining experience all the more visceral, all Buns and Guns establishments play a continuous loop of rifle fire, mortar fire, and explosion sounds to eat by. And if any of the wait staff happen to have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, who knows what kind of exciting outbursts that could elicit? It’s the only restaurant in Lebanon guaranteed to seamlessly integrate into your daily routine of being bombarded with mortar shells.

The motto says it all: “A Sandwich Can Kill You.” Drop in today to find out how!

(nuffy.net)

Chinese President Hu Jintao will visit Mali, Senegal, Tanzania and Mauritius in this month to discuss a series of measures to help African countries cushion the impact of the global financial crisis.

Over the past decade China has been consolidating its economic relationship with various African countries.  Given the crisis, I thnk it would be interesting to discuss if China will maintain its aid, trade, investment and migration flows to Sub-Saharan Africa and if there will be opportunities for new innovative financing mechanisms.

In her recent book, “Dead Aid,” Dambisa Moyo mentioned that “if you start to look towards China for example, which has $4 trillion of reserves, all of a sudden you could see there might be another opportunity to do a bond issue in the Chinese market.”

Some recent developments on this front:

• China is confident to deliver on its aid package by the end of this year announced at the China-Africa summit in Beijing in 2006.
• Loans are still coming: Angola is close to securing an additional $ 1 billion loan.
• Chinese firms are still investing in Africa: Tanzania plans to sell a 49% stake in its state-run Air Tanzania to a Chinese firm.
• In Liberia, China Union just signed a $ 2.6 billion contract to develop the Bong iron-ore deposit.

I visited four countries – Ghana, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania in 2006.  We interviewed several Chinese firms operating in Africa in order to  gain perspective on China-Africa cooperation and to see how goods, capital and labor movements facilitate the formation of business links.

Some observations from that trip:

1. Chinese Aid: There has been a lot of progress since the establishment of the first China-Africa Cooperation Forum in 2000 including tariff cuts, debt exemptions and the establishment of the China-Africa Development Fund. Chinese aid does not impose political and economic conditionality requirements, making it an attractive source of aid.China is investing in areas that western aid agencies and private investors have long neglected: physical infrastructure, industry and agriculture. Much of China’s recent official economic aid to Africa is in the form of China Ex-Im Bank loan financing. China also provides cooperation in human resources development. By the end of 2008, China has sent 125 youth volunteers and some 100 farming specialists to Africa. It has also trained about 11,000 local experts.
2. Loans: Beijing’s loans are oil-backed and many are targeted at infrastructure projects that facilitate development of the petroleum industry. Angola received as part of a larger package $ 2 billion in loans in 2004 and “it is close to securing an additional  $ 1 billion loan.”
3. Investment by Chinese firms: By 2003, Chinese investors had already established 602 businesses in 49 African countries, covering such areas as trade, industry, and agriculture. Chinese firms have been investing in African infrastructure (hydropower plants, pipelines, factories and hospitals). Chinese firms are competitive in countries where political situations, sanctions or other potential liabilities keep multinationals from investing in countries presenting such risks. Chinese companies have been active in the mineral rich countries of central and southern Africa.Chinese expatriates were helping their firms to overcome information costs in doing business with China. Several of the interviewed firms reported that they imported their new machinery and equipment from China. (See Box 5.14 on “Africa’s Silk Road: China and India’s New Economic Frontier”).
4. Chinese  Migration: Chinese migration to Africa has surged since the year 2000, according to a joint study by Barry Sautman, and Yan Hairong.There were still some barriers to the free movement of labor between China and Africa countries. I found that Chinese firms in Tanzania and South Africa faced several problems to get study permits for children of expatriates.  In Tanzania, a firm paid $ 600 for a two-year working permit and a. Chinese expatriate had to show a return ticket to China at the point of entry.

Both China and Africa have recognized the potential economic gains in fostering cooperation. Chinese companies are attracted to the possibility for large profits in markets with less competition from multinational firms.  Deeper engagement with China is both desirable and inevitable for Africa despite the crisis. The purpose is to assess each aspect of this relationship and to measure carefully potential gains and losses to Africa.

(World Bank )

There’s a lot to love about being single. You save money on Valentine’s Day gifts, you get to meet new and interesting people and sometimes you even get to have sex with them.

But it’s not all knocking boots and freedom. There are some aspects of single life that might, in fact, be seen as less than desirable. And then there are these five facts that will make you wish you got married in high school …

Single People Tell Themselves:

Of course my married co-workers take home a little more scratch than me! They tend to be older and lamer, and most corporate pay-scales are directly tied to how old and lame you are.

“We deserve more money, because we’re so close to death.”

The Truth:

You’ve got one part right: Your married co-workers take home more money. Just how much you’re getting cornholed depends on who you ask, but a recent study pegged it at about 27 percent.

But it’s not just age. The above study was based on identical twins where the bachelor was just as educated as his married dopelganger. In fact, even if you and a married man do the same job at the same level of competence for the same number of years, the guy with the ring takes home more than you.

“And I don’t even like my wife, you chump!“

There are a couple of possible explanations for this and, contrary to what you might want to believe, none of them involve your boss being jealous of your electrifying sex life. The explanation married guys are most likely to cite is a little old fashioned elbow grease. It’s hard not to hustle when the option behind door number two is “let your wife and kids starve to death.” Meanwhile, single guys are more likely to take a sick day to sleep off an especially bad hangover, or quit a great job because the nachos in the cafeteria suck.

And even if your married co-worker is the slap dick and you’re the responsible one, the perception still may not change. From your boss’s perspective, that guy’s money is going toward feeding his kids. Yours could be going toward any number of elicit activities he’s vaguely aware of. One of those sex parties he’s seen on those HBO documentaries, perhaps.

Single People Tell Themselves:

In an unprecedented act of kindness, American corporations decided their employees were working too hard and began enforcing something called “work/life balance.” Of course they had their selfish reasons. A happier employee will do better work, and get sick less. But who cares? Less work means more time for us single folk to go out and have indiscriminate sex with one another, right?

The Truth:

If you’re single, work/life balance is yet another way for the world to punish you for being unloved. One way the “balance” is enforced is the Family and Medical Leave Act, which gives any employee the right to take time off if a spouse, child or parent gets sick.

But what if you’re struggling to save up enough money for a ring for your girlfriend of seven years when she gets hit by a bus? According to work/life balance, you’d better have some vacation time saved up. Otherwise, you’re just going to have to learn to weep a little quieter, because you’re sort of bumming out the rest of the folks in Accounts Receivable.

Take it outside.

There’s also the unofficial considerations. Married employees simply have more legitimate excuses to ask for time off: a kid’s birthday party, an anniversary dinner, Christmas. Yes, single people are more likely to be asked to work on holidays. The logic goes: You’re single, you don’t have a wife or kids, what could you possibly have to do? It doesn’t matter if you were planning to spend the day delivering presents to sick children. Someone’s got to pick up the slack for the married guy who keeps taking time off to attend his daughter’s dance recital.

“Dance Recital.”

But don’t worry too much about vacation time. Thanks to something called per person double occupancy (PPDO), you wouldn’t be able to go on good vacations anyways. Essentially, hotels, cruise lines, pretty much anything that isn’t a plane or a train, is designed and priced for couples. The travel industry wants as many people as possible roaming the streets in a capitalist frenzy. The more people they can pack into a hotel or a cruise ship, the happier they are. If that means punishing you for being unloved, so be it. Maybe you’ll learn not to be so lonely next time.

Single People Tell Themselves:

The tax code has something called the “marriage penalty,” which is supposed to make married couples pay more. See? Uncle Sam remembers what it was like to be a squirrel trying to get a nut.

The Truth:

Actually, 51 percent of married couples get a tax bonus, and it can be up to $1300 a freaking year. Just enough for your co-worker to take his wife on that Hawaiian vacation while you do all his work.

The benefit comes if there’s an income disparity; i.e. one partner is making more than the other. If they’re pulling in the mad bucks and their spouse is working a part time job, or just a full-time job that sucks, they wind up paying less. You’re stuck with the full tab.

To add a little salt to the hemorrhaging wound in your bank account, married couples can choose to file jointly or separately. So they have plenty of wiggle room to get the lowest taxes possible. So basically, instead of getting a tax break, you’re doing the equivalent of buying another wedding gift for all the happily married couples you know every April 14th.

You paid for that wine. And that mustache.

And if you think the government’s a dick to private citizens around tax time, you should try fighting wars for them. You might expect the military to pay people who get shot at pretty well, regardless of whether or not they’re married. But in fact, a soldier with a ring on their finger is entitled to an extra $250 a month based on a piece of legislation left over from WWI called Family Separation Allowance. They also get an increased housing allowance, which is untaxed money. So basically, married soldiers get bigger houses and enough money to install a jacuzzi in the backyard. But hey, at least you single folks get to play the field in Iraq.

Above: The field in Iraq.

(http://www.cracked.com)

George W. Bush died today according to a South African TV station. During one of its broadcasts, ETV News ran a moving banner across the screen announcing the death of the former US president.

Minutes later, jubilant crowds thronged the streets across the nation hoisting up flags and banners in celebration. In the capital Pretoria, tens of thousands of people marched upon the Union Buildings which include the official seat of the South African government. There they sang songs, danced and even joyously wept. Some reporters at the scene are said to have heard clapping and cheering coming from within the parliament building itself.

In Johannesburg, home to 3.8 million people, around 750,000 revellers danced in the city’s large Botanical Garden. Fireworks were set off, bungee-jumps erected and roses handed out to passers-by. Unfortunately, the local council is said to be devastated after the garden’s main attraction, the famous Rose Garden, was left bereft of its 10,000 roses.

Table Top Mountain, which overlooks the city of Cape Town saw its largest influx of visitors on record. Close to a million people flocked to the flat-topped mountain in order to attend a gigantic prayer service in thanksgiving for the day’s extraordinary news. One of South Africa’s prominent bishops was on hand to lead the act of worship.

However, it was later discovered that the TV moving banner news had been a mistake which had taken place when a technician had pressed the wrong button. The staff member had selected the “broadcast live for transmission” button instead of the test-run alternative. Apparently he had just wanted to see what the test banner would look like and had typed in “Bush is dead” as a gap filler.

“The technical director pressed the wrong button, it took a second for the words to appear and then the words were on screen for only three seconds before they were taken off.” said spokesman Vasili Vass.

Unfortunately, the correction was announced on television after most people had left their houses to celebrate the original, but mistaken, news piece. Police and the army have been put on high alert in case of widespread violence and rioting once the general public hear of the corrected news. It’s expected alcohol sales and the use of firearms will increase dramatically over the next week as people try to dull the pain.

The new US president, Barack Obama, has so far refused to comment on the story. Some Western media journalists are calling this the ‘Bushism of Bushisms’.

(http://politicsandpoetry.com)

A former soldier pulled his own teeth out with a pair of pliers because he could not find a dentist to take on NHS patients.

Iraq War veteran Ian Boynton could not afford to go private for treatment so instead took the drastic action to remove 13 of his teeth that were giving him severe pain.

The 42-year-old, from Beverley, East Yorkshire, had not had his teeth looked at since seeing the army dentist in 2003. He had not been registered with a dentist of his own since 2001.

DIY: Ian Boynton pulled out 13 of his teeth with a pair of pliers because he couldn’t afford a dentist

He said: ‘I’ve tried to get in at 30 dentists over the last eight years but have never been able to find one to take on NHS patients.’

But when Mr Boynton started suffering from toothache in 2006 he decided to take drastic action.

He said: ‘I started having pain in a front tooth, which protruded slightly more than the others. I was constantly fiddling with it and wiggling it because it hurt so much.

‘In the end I knew it had to come out and had to use the pliers to pull it.  Amazingly, it did not hurt as much as you might think.

‘I think I’d been prising it that much in the meantime that I’d been killing the nerve.’

In the last two years Mr Boynton has pulled out 13 top teeth including molars, incisors and canines. He now only has two teeth left in the roof of his mouth.

He served as a medic in Iraq in 2003, but six months after leaving the Territorial Army had an accident while working as a paint sprayer that aggravated an old back injury.

Unemployed Mr Boynton, who is single, said: ‘It’s a horrible situation to be in when you can’t afford to go to the dentist when your teeth were so bad.’

In a stroke of ill-timed luck he has now finally found a dentist to take him on.

Mr Boynton said: ‘I think the situation has improved slightly because of all the uproar. Unfortunately it came too late for me.

‘I desperately needed a dentist because, although I’m no longer in pain, I need to have false teeth as I’m finding it difficult to eat.

‘Unfortunately I can’t make false teeth myself.’

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk)

President Bush was given an Iraqi-journalist-style sendoff on his last full day in office Monday, as tourists and demonstrators lobbed shoes, pumps, boots, sandals and Crocs from Pennsylvania Avenue onto the White House lawn.

Before launching the operation live, the shoe-chuckers took target practice in Dupont Circle on a 20-foot-tall blow up doll of the outgoing president, decked out in the flight suit he wore aboard the “Mission Accomplished” aircraft carrier.

Unlike Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi reporter who inspired the protest, none of the shoe-throwers in the group were arrested. (Later that day, reports NBC, one man was arrested for chucking a shoe at the White House.)

Marching down Connecticut Avenue with handfuls of footwear, the group of about a hundred was on the receiving end of enthusiastic honks, thumbs-up and waves from people in the street.

The reception was almost as warm from the people guarding the White House.

“Don’t hit me!” one officer behind the White House fence joked as shoes rained around him.

Tracey Primavera, a shoe-lobber from Provincetown, Massachusetts, shouted at the guard that she had a pump that would look nice on him.

“I tried that. It didn’t look good on me,” yelled back the officer. Primavera tossed him the pump anyway.

Tourists on Pennsylvania Avenue picked up shoes and lobbed them at the White House as well. “A lot of random people joined in,” noted one organizer, David Swanson. “Everybody wanted to be photographed with an “Arrest Bush” sign.

The tourists also joined a spontaneous chorus that formed. On the night of the election, thousands of people swarmed the White House and sang the old sports classic, “Hey, Hey, Hey, Goodbye.” The song made a reappearance Monday, as did a number of tunes apparently written for the occasion, with lyrics such as “Hang down your head, George Bush/Hang down your head in shame,” and “Take him to the Hague” — the latter sung to the tune of “Working on the Railroad.”

The target practice on the giant Bush doll began around 11:00 in the morning and was still going five hours later, as thousands of people walking through the circle stopped to pick up a shoe and wing it at the outgoing president. Some threw fastballs like al-Zaidi. Others tied several together in an attempt to land them on Bush’s long Pinocchio-esque nose. Children took part. (”Okay. One more shoe, kids,” said one parent.) Some folks simply walked up to the doll and kicked it in the shins. It fell over at one point and people rushed it, beating it with shoes.

Still others, like al-Zaidi, missed.

“Ah! I missed!” yelled Sharon Kerr, in town from Austin, Texas, after chucking wide of her presidential mark. She said that she felt a little like the Iraqi reporter for missing. But she noted in his defense, “He had people blocking him.”

Kerr began to leave the circle but stopped. “I’m gonna go one more time. I’m gonna nail him this time,” she said before winding up and striking him cleanly in the belt.

Cheryl Upshaw, in from Atlanta and sporting a full-length fur coat, hit the Bush doll high on the shoulder. “I was really trying to aim for his heart,” said Upshaw, a registered nurse who owns a home healthcare agency. The throw was cathartic, she said, and it seemed to relieve some of her anger.

“It’s not that I hate him,” she clarified. “I don’t hate him personally. I hate what he has done to this country.”

Medea Benjamin, a cofounder of the antiwar group CODEPINK, said the protest was a way to “get the Bush era out of your intestines.”

“I was a little reluctant because I want to be in a positive mood,” she said. “I don’t want to be seen as doing something violent. The shoe-throwing is borderline, but the intent is to insult, not to hurt. There’s a fine line.”

Once all the shoes had been tossed onto the White House lawn, the officers collected them and piled them into the back of a small truck. “The next person who throws them gets arrested,” said one, though the entire pile had already been thrown.

As the protesters headed back toward Dupont Circle, a Secret Service agent left them with a parting observation.

“You all won,” he said.

(Photo credit: James Sappington)

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com)

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

(http://www.theonion.com)

On December 18th, 2008, a 10 year-old 5th grader named Chao Qun Zheng went to his elementary school in HeNan, China.

When his teacher, Guo, found out that young Zheng had not completed his homework, she flipped out.

“She was very angry at the time,” he said. “She ripped and twisted my cheeks with both her hands and then she lifted me off the ground.”

The teacher held the boy up until one of his cheeks actually ripped off and the boy was bleeding profusely.

Without hesitation the teacher reached down and picked up Zheng’s cheek skin, put it on his face, and instructed the boy go home immediately.

When the parents saw Zheng, they immediately took him to the hospital where it took 52 stitches to have his cheek sewn back on.

Zheng’s father has reported the case to the police and is expected to press for damages.

(http://www.weirdasianews.com)